Sprint

Sprint — NYSE: S — is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas and is the third largest iPhone and iPad carrier, among other devices, in the United States.

Sprint traces its history back to 1899, when Cleyson and Jacob Brown started the Brown Telephone Company to provide telephone service to the farms surrounding Abilene, Kansas. By 1911 the company joined more than a dozen other independent service providers to form the United Telephone Company, eventually becoming United Telecommunications by the mid-1960s.

The name Sprint was originally an acroynm that stood for Switched Private Network Telecommunications, a rebranded switched voice service from Southern Pacific Communications (SPC). SPC and GTE would merge in the early 1980s, and United Telecom merged with that organization shortly thereafter. By 1992, the new organization was called Sprint Corp.

Sprint's expansion into nationwide wireless service began in the mid-1990s, acquiring 1900 MHz PCS spectrum and building out a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network — the same communications technology (operating at different frequencies) that powers rival Verizon's nationwide wireless network.

By 2004 Sprint announced a merger with fellow telecom company Nextel, an integration that ultimately proved difficult thanks to different network footprints and disparate technologies in use. Sprint Nextel spent much of the first decade of the new millennium acquiring affiliate carriers.

While Sprint has divested itself of local landline holdings, the company continues to derive revenue from long-distance service and through its Internet services. Sprint is a Tier 1 ISP that resells its services to major corporations and smaller ISPs.

In October 2012 Sprint was acquired by Japanese telecom company SoftBank, which presently owns 80 percent of the company.

Sprint had hoped to build out a next-generation wireless network using 2.5 GHz WiMAX, a technology operated by Clearwire Corp., which was acquired by Sprint. That effort failed, and the company has been migrating its customers to LTE instead.

Sprint was the third major U.S. carrier to begin selling the iPhone, which it did in late 2011.

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Sprint is offering their loyal customers some fairly substantial discounts for the holidays, including discounted device leasing, free service, and accessory discounts. Of course, it's Sprint defining "loyal" here, though customers that have been deemed worthy of the title have started receiving...

Sprint today released preliminary results from the third fiscal quarter of 2014, showing the company acquiring almost 1 million new subscribers. Reported growth was driven by the strongest postpaid gross additions in three years, painting a positive picture for the US network.
The 967,000 new...

Sprint's taking the fight straight to T-Mobile and is offering customers of the Un-carrier a guaranteed minimum trade-in credit of $200 for their current working T-Mobile smartphone. That's in addition to the current contract buy-out offer (though T-Mobile ditched traditional contracts nearly two...

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Sprint is now offering anyone who switches from their current wireless carrier to its service full reimbursement of both their termination fees and any remaining phone payments.
This is just the latest effort from Sprint to get new customers. The company says that it will pay off any remaining...

Sprint announced today that it has partnered with Best Buy to offer an exclusive unlimited plan, fittingly called the "Best Buy One Plan," through the retailer starting at $65 per month with a leased 16GB iPhone 6.
The Best Buy One Plan allows customers to lease a 16GB iPhone 6 starting for $...

Sprint is launching yet another price promotion, this time for its Family Share Plan. The limited time offer will give customers up to 10 lines of shared unlimited talk and text, along with 12GB of data, for $90 a month. The carrier says that the offer will end on March 12.
From Sprint:...

T-Mobile CEO John Legere stated today that the wireless carrier has overtaken Sprint, in terms of the number of its customers, to become the third biggest wireless carrier in the US. Legere made those claims as part of T-Mobile's quarterly conference call to analysts following the release of its...

After hearing various rumblings on such an agreement in recent days, it looks like Sprint has struck a deal with RadioShack that would see the carrier expanding into 1,750 RadioShack locations. According to the press release, the deal will "establish co-branded stores that will exclusively sell...

The top five carriers in the United States will on Feb. 11 implement new unlocking procedures for smartphones, tablets, and other cellular devices sold on their networks. The new unlocking standards were set forth by the CTIA in late 2013 and, though a voluntary commitment by the carriers, define...

Following its preliminary publication, Sprint has today shared its final report for Q3 2014. The US carrier managed to bag just short of one million new connections, boasting "significant progress on building a consistent and reliable network". It's not all good news, however. As the recent Super...

Sprint is launching a new bundle promotion that will allow buyers to get both an iPhone and iPad for one monthly contract price. The starting price for the limited time offer is $100 a month for the 16GB iPhone 6 and the 16GB iPad Mini 3.
CNET reports on the specifics this new promotional...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced that the city has reached a deal with Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile to bring 4G LTE from all four carriers to the Chicago Transit Authority's subway system. The network, which will replace the decade-old system currently in Chicago's subways,...

Sprint's taking the fight straight to T-Mobile and is offering customers of the Un-carrier a guaranteed minimum trade-in credit of $200 for their current working T-Mobile smartphone. That's in addition to the current contract buy-out offer (though T-Mobile ditched traditional contracts nearly two...